‘Dinosaur fish’ lady dies
Newspapers have marked the passing, at age 97, of Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer. In 1938, she alerted the scientific world that the coelacanth fish was alive and well. Before that time, it had been thought extinct, having died out about ‘the time of the dinosaurs’. The species was named Latimeria chalumnae in her honour.
- The Telegraph, www.telegraph.co.uk, 1 March 2005.
Interesting to see the ‘living fossil’ coelacanth fish still given a high profile, even though its discovery was both a disappointment and a challenge to evolutionists.
A disappointment because living specimens showed it was a fish, not a creature making the evolutionary transition to land, as had been proposed on the basis of coelacanth fossils. A challenge because, according to evolutionary dating assumptions, coelacanth fossils are, like those of dinosaurs, not found in rocks less than ‘70 million years’ old. But the continued existence of this fish makes sense if the fossil record largely reflects the order of burial in a global Flood, around 4,500 years ago.
So when sceptics taunt: ‘If dinos and humans lived together, then why don’t we find their fossils together?’ one may simply respond: ‘Whales and coelacanths live together, so why don’t we see their fossils together?’ See ‘Living fossils’ enigma, Creation 22(2):56, 2000, also Q&A: Fossils.
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